The Bath

It was the middle of the afternoon. My mother’s voice was smoky and quiet, calming. I was five and a half years old.

“Billy, you and I are going to take a bath together, and I’m going to show you my breast. You know I had a mastectomy, and they removed my breast, but I’m better now, and I don’t want you to be afraid.”

Bill Ratner

Bill Ratner is one of Hollywood’s premier voiceover artists and a published author, narrating movie trailers for Marvel’s Ant-Man, Pixar’s Inside-Out, Ron Howard’s Rush, Will Ferrell's The Campaign, MegaMind, Talladega Nights, etc., commercials for Hyundai, Sprint, Pizza Hut, etc., documentary narrations for Discovery, History Channel, Smithsonian Channel, Disney World, and is the game voice of "Donnel Udina" on Mass Effect 1, 2 & 3, and the voice of "Flint" on G.I. Joe, Robot Chicken, Community, and Family Guy. His book from Familius Publications, Parenting for the Digital Age: The Truth behind Media's Effect on Children and What To Do About It, achieved #1 Hot New Release on Amazon.com. His personal essays and short fiction are published in The Baltimore Review, Blue Lake Review, The Amor Fati, Pleiades, Southern Anthology, Spork, NiteBlade.com, National Cheng Kung Literary, Papier Maché Press, TV Marquee, Coast Magazine, Wolfsinger Press Metastasis anthology, The Missouri Review audio essay, and he is contributing author of Secrets of Voiceover Success from Sentient Press. One of America’s leading storytellers, Bill’s spoken word performances can be heard on National Public Radio stations’ Good Food, The Business, and KCRW’s Strangers. He is a nine-time winner of The Moth StorySLAMs and a two-time winner of The Best of The Hollywood Fringe Festival Extension for solo performance. He has told stories at Comedy Central Stage Hollywood, Hasbro G.I. Joe Con, Long Beach Comic Com, National Storytelling Festival Slam, Portland Storytelling Festival, Timpanogos Storytelling Conference, Northlands Conference, LANES Share the Fire, National Storytelling Network Conference, and Los Angeles Unified School District classrooms since 1985. HUFFINGTON POST: “More than just the premiere voiceover talent in Hollywood, Ratner writes with the subtlety and texture worthy of a literary fiction master.” Bill teaches Voiceovers for Storytellers® for The Screen Actors Guild Foundation, SAG-AFTRA, and at storytelling festivals and conferences across the country. He holds a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from U.C. Riverside/Palm Desert, is a graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is a member of Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television & Radio Artists, Actors Equity Association, and the National Storytelling Network.